The Catholic Biblical Quarterly

This book offers a comparative, close reading of two texts that are, in principle, both well known but that have not yet been considered in detail. The first one is the tale of Ahiqar [End Page 551] or Akhiqar, which is transmitted in an Aramaic papyrus of the fifth century b.c.e. from Elephantine and in many versions in different languages of later times. Moore normally makes use of only the Syriac version (given that other versions are likely derived from it). The second text is chap. 36 of the biblical Book of Jeremiah, which deals with Jeremiah’s scribe Baruch and his scroll. The specific question is about scribal culture and the milieu of scribes—indeed, both texts are situated at the royal court.

The author starts, after an extensive introduction, with a close reading of the relevant passages of both compositions, each in a separate chapter. M. pays much attention to questions of transmission, always making use also of the LXX version of Jeremiah, not only the MT, and discussing their differences. He concludes that the LXX version contains an older form of the tale, which the editor of the MT has altered.

By adducing many parallels to Ahiqar from Neo-Assyrian sources (and pointing out a few Akkadian loanwords in the Aramaic text), M. succeeds in demonstrating how much the text fits the circumstances of Mesopotamia and Syria in the seventh and sixth centuries b.c.e.. Especially for Jeremiah, the focus is on the sociocultural milieu, not on the tools of the scribal craft, which M. sees as already covered sufficiently by other scholars. For example, J. F. Quack has demonstrated that the Hebrew word ʿeṭ (a pen or rush) is likely to be a loanword from ancient Egyptian (“Eine ägyptische Bezeichnung der Schreibbinse als Lehnwort im Hebräischen?,” WdO 52 [2022] 84–88). To be noted especially is M.’s discussion of the title “scribe” in the Hebrew Bible, including the question of whether multiple figures carried this title at the same time or whether there was only one official scribe at a time (pp. 125–29 and 131–34). He also stresses that a “scribe” was a powerful political figure.

In a final chapter, the two texts are placed in direct comparison. M. sees the Aramaic Ahiqar text as being an implicit attack against Akkadian scribal culture, while overtly producing a work of royal propaganda. By contrast, the tale of Jeremiah and Baruch’s scroll is openly subversive and uses the social world of Hebrew scribal interactions to convey an anti-monarchical message. M. discusses eight specific motives for this message, namely, a focus on introductory words of the senior scribal protagonist; a historical reference to the succession of kings; the imparting of knowledge to a scribal student/apprentice; the senior scribe’s self-acknowledged inability to perform his scribal duty; a professional conflict brought about by the scribal student’s/apprentice’s actions; an angry king who commands a prince to capture/kill the protagonist; courtly characters who intervene in the protagonists’ conflict; and courtly colleagues who save the protagonists’ lives by hiding them away or encouraging them to hide.

I was especially interested in the author’s demonstration that the traditional apprentice model (where one single teacher would train one single student) would consolidate the power in the hands of a few scribes and their limited circle of influence (p. 151). Biblical scholars are likely to be interested also in M.’s discussion of the evolution of a first-to a third-person narrative in Jeremiah in the light of the transmission of the Ahiqar story, where similar phenomena can be demonstrated making use of the different versions.

Perhaps the most innovative aspect of this book is how it succeeds in dismantling the purely positive image of Ahiqar to which we have become accustomed. The author convincingly points out that...